


Gonzo

by akathecentimetre



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Wings, original demon character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:11:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an injured Cas calls to Heaven for a steed to fly him around the earth, Dean and Sam aren't sure what to expect. In the event, they're pretty sure that summoning a lazy, needy <i>griffin</i> was totally unnecessary. In every respect. Then again, that would also apply to the Demon of Discord hunting a five-year-old Annie lookalike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gonzo

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first SPN fic, and I'm a recent fan - just having fun with my new obsession. This is slightly AU in that it takes place outside the show's timeline, i.e. Sam is sane and not drinking demon blood, there are no Leviathans (couldn't deal with that much plot) and Destiel is one smoldering glance away; if push comes to shove, this could theoretically happen in an AUish Season 4? I hope you guys enjoy it!

  
"And griffins keep the mountains in which be gems and precious stones, and suffer them not to be taken from thence." 

**\- Bartholomew Angelicus, 13th Century, Book XVIII of _De proprietatibus rerum_**

_***_

In retrospect, Dean is convinced that his first sighting of Castiel's wings couldn't have gone much worse. 

After the promise held out by months of Cas's infuriating, cockblocking shadows and that feeling that one day, just one day, he was going to turn in time and catch a glimpse of feathers as the angel landed in whatever shitty motel room they ended up in that particular night and folded them away, he's so unprepared for anything besides celestial beauty that, for a moment at least, he thinks - as he starts up of the couch with a snort, and Sam falls out of his armchair across the room - that the almighty crash of Cas going through the tin roof of one of Bobby's many garages is just a demon attack, because really, that would be a less terrifying prospect than a fallen angel.

He fumbles for a shotgun and staggers to the door as Sam keens out his displeasure at the lump rising on his forehead. "What the  _hell_ , man - "

"Cas," Dean grunts out as he forces his feet into his shoes, still dizzy with sleep, and he knows he's right as Sam face scrunches and he scrambles to his feet, because he can  _feel_  Cas, everywhere, as though his grace is throbbing out in search of aid, and the ghost of the palmprint on his shoulder is tingling in time with it.

"What in 'tarnation - "

So Bobby's up, too, which Dean is for some reason absurdly glad of as he opens the front door and lets in dancing leaves, because he can't go and see this alone, he just can't. He only barely keeps his finger on the trigger of the shotgun as he stumbles down the porch steps, leaving Sam to cover him and Bobby pulling on a shirt in their wake, all three of them bathed in the glow radiating from the ruined shed. It's too bright, the light, not just painful but actually irritating, scouring at their eyes through the hands they raise to shield themselves, raw and untamed.

But it doesn't just fade as they approach - it  _turns off_ , plunging them into the relative darkness of weak moonlight, and Dean takes off running, bellowing for Cas, wrenching open what's left of the door as Sam hisses warning behind him, and finds - 

They're huge. Really huge. When stretched out straight, they'd probably be the width of Bobby's house. As it is, they're crumpled up, feathers swirling bloody and bent across the ground, collapsed in on themselves so Dean can barely see Cas, splayed on the twisted corrugated metal. His breath comes shallow and fast, almost a pant, his eyes rolling beneath their lids, and Dean thinks, absurdly, that he needs to be careful, this is a rabid dog with the infected wound still fresh. Well, an unconscious rabid dog, but Dean's pretty sure that either adjective, when applied to Cas, is really bad fucking news. 

"Jesus," Bobby breathes. The expressions on his and Sam's faces - and his own, Dean can guess - are pretty damn hilarious. Or they would be, were it not for the fact that half of Cas's left wing is  _gone_ , a splinter of bone sticking up into the air all that remains of what on the right wing is a healthy, if currently ragged, lower joint. Dean recognizes the pattern of bitemarks, can still feel them on his own ribs.

"No, hellhounds," he croaks, as though it'll explain everything, and carefully takes a step through the melee of displaced car parts, trying to tiptoe through the feathers nearest Castiel's feet - the angel's eyes fly open, and so does the right wing, slamming him off his feet and back into Sam's chest. "Whoa, man, easy!"

Cas is upright, or at least sitting up, gasping at them all, blood smeared across his face and coat. It spurts from unseen wounds as he moves. Dean swallows, holds out his hands, tries to draw the angel's unsteady gaze. 

"Hey, dude," he says, grateful perhaps more than ever before for the tight grip of Sammy's hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Y'took a tumble. Let us take you inside, huh?"

"I will not fit inside," Cas says, because clearly, that's the most important problem they have to deal with right now. "I - "

He stops, and looks at Dean, properly. Dean cherishes the hope he feels at that small flicker of recognition before Cas gives in and falls flat again, all six limbs in a dead faint.

"Okay," Sam says weakly.

They do get him inside, eventually, practically wrapping him up in the wings to get him through the front door. Cas may be out, or at least his vessel is, but the wings are still sentient, reacting to every movement, thrashing in pain whenever the broken bone escapes Dean's pinioning arm and brushes against anything. They're all sporting the equivalent of wing paper-cuts on their faces and arms by the time they've sliced him out of his trenchcoat and shirt (Dean finds himself praying that Cas's healing-mojo applies to ripped seams when this is over) and laid him down on blankets spread out on the kitchen floor, the table moved so both he and the injured half-wing can lie flat. It looks so  _wrong_ , to Dean, all those feathers and bones and implied membranes of metaphysical muscles torn up like that. Castiel's shoulders shake, and his back and chest are bruised a solid blue from the right side of his neck to his hip. Whatever hounds had caught ahold of him, they hadn't just chewed - they'd pulled, as though trying to drag him down to earth, or Hell.

They hold a hurried conference at Bobby's desk, none of them able to keep looking over each other's shoulders, staring, just  _staring_  at them. "What now?"

"Don't look at me," Bobby whispers quickly. "Seriously, boys, ain't got nothing on treating angels. Far's any of my book's concerned - far's  _all of human culture's_  concerned - ain't got nothing on taking care of 'em. Hell, far as we've known, they ain't supposed to be  _able_  to be hurt."

Dean looks away, forces himself not to go nuts and yell about all the ways he knows Cas hurts. "Yeah, well, clearly your research on them angel blades hasn't gotten very far, then," he says, taking a small moment of relief in teasing, and Bobby's eyes narrow. "You ever talked to him about how his mojo works? 'Cause it's clearly not in action right now."

Bobby shakes his head, and Sam does likewise. Sam's watching Dean like he thinks his inner jack-in-the-box is about to spring. "You?"

"Me what?"

"Did he ever tell you how it worked." 

"Nah, man. Heavenly secrecy. Even if he wanted to tell me, he'd probably explain it in quadratic theology."

A moan floats over from the kitchen, and Dean takes a deep breath, runs his hands over his face. He is far too awake. "Alright, well. He's got wings. Birds've got wings. We can check 'em, right? Set bones, clean him up?"

"Sure, I guess. If y'feel like takin' your life in your hands," Bobby says, nodding towards the window, where the wind that arrived with Cas still howls. "They ain't just feathers, Dean. They're made'f angeldust."

"Really?" Sam almost sounds like he's going to laugh. "We've spent all this time around grace and all the crazy shit it causes, and you go for 'angeldust'?"

Bobby smacks him in the chest, and as Sam scowls and rubs the spot, he turns to Dean. "Seriously, Dean. He could fry you."

"Not in this state he couldn't," Dean mumbles, though he knows what they're on about, still remembers the glass of that gas station shattering around him too well to not be careful. 

Bobby and Sam help him gather blankets, gauze, a bucket of warm water, needle and thread, and splints in silence, pushing everything into a pile in the tacit acknowledgment that only he, the Raised man, has the right or the permission to approach Cas again. Besides, Dean's pretty sure - as Sam takes up position cross-legged in the doorway to the porch, salt spread in front of him and the shotgun in his lap - that the other two could well be needed to protect him and Cas from other things besides a grace-storm before the night is out. Cas is still broadcasting like a beacon, his distress washing in waves over Dean's skin (which he definitely shouldn't think is hot, but hey, maybe in different circumstances, much, much later), and he's willing to bet that whatever went to so much trouble to try and ground a member of the Heavenly Host is gonna try again, and soon.

Even if it weren't so easy to see the break, it's easy to see the blood spreading from each wound on the wings as Dean creeps closer with his arsenal of bandages. The wings are black, dully, the color of a slightly-dusty chalkboard, and where there's bleeding they've turned to pitch, shiny and sodden. Dean settles by the broken one, figuring it's kinder to take care of the worst of it first, and lays a hand on Cas's bruised shoulder. He gets nothing in response, not even an unconscious twitch, so, thinking it's safe to venture further, he puts his other hand, covered in a wet bandage, into the kinked feathers right where they start to sprout around Cas's back, and swipes gently down. 

There's a delay of a few seconds, in which he turns his hand to check on the traces of blood the water brought with it, before the right wing flutters, tense, and then relaxes down again. Dean snorts out a quiet laugh, re-wets the bandage in the bucket, and wipes again. "Stubborn bastard," he mutters fondly. "You are such a pussy." He gets closer to a tear, skirts around it carefully, keeps coming back to it until the ripped feathers are clean and drying. "Our little pussycat."

Sam is yawning by the door, his back propped up against it, by the time Dean gets to the break itself. It's messy, bitemarks layered over each other in several directions, and Dean thinks unbidden of Cas straining to get off the ground, twisting, the dogs of hell ripping at his grace. Cas shakes as Dean cleans away their spit, stares at the bone for a while, and then helplessly binds the ragged end with gauze that is quickly soaked red again. There's not much he can do, for there's nothing left to fix - except wait for Cas to wake up.

The other wing looks only scratched, but when he runs his finger along the bones he finds evidence of several small stress fractures, the strain of having to take Cas's weight - to get him away - on its own being too much. Dean feels clumsy with the tape he and Sam usually use on their innumerable sprained wrists, because the angles are all wrong, but eventually he thinks he's done. It doesn't feel, or look, like he's made that much of a difference, and Cas is still shivering, though he suspects - or at least hopes - that that's more to do with cold than pain. He covers Cas up to his chin, and the right wing slips under the quilt apparently of its own free will, seeking warmth. The left stays starkly flung out, as though it knows it's broken, and cannot bring itself to join its mate. 

Sam is asleep, snoring, the shotgun barrel pointed (of course, because only he could be that careless) at his own face. Bobby is god knows where, but Dean hopes in bed, as Dean slips the gun from between Sammy's arms and sits himself down on the kitchen floor, his back shoved into the corner formed by the fridge and cupboards. He thinks to himself that he should feel something about all this, but the weirdness and anxiety have rendered him thoughtless. He sleeps, eventually, conking out with a black feather between his hands, running his thumbs along its flinty edges.

***

Sam shakes him awake, his face so close that Dean nearly smashes their foreheads together when he startles up. "What?"

"Shh," Sam says, flicking a glance to one side. He looks tense, knotted up, but his eyes are wide as though he's seen something rapturous. Dean grumbles wordlessly, scrapes sleep off of his face, and slowly sits up from where he's keeled sideways onto the floor.

Cas is sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, but it's not that simple fact that makes Dean's breath catch. It's the sight of his wings, blood and bandages and all, draped behind him, the tip of the healthy one just brushing the floor. Late summer sun is pouring in through Bobby's windows and gleaming along them, the blur where they join his back the darkest while the ends of the feathers are so bright Dean can't make them out even when he blinks and squints. 

If he were in a sentimental mood, he'd openly declare them stunning and insist on taking Cas out into the sunrise just to look at them some more. But he's tired, and aching, and the bacon Sam is attempting to cook smells way too damn good, and Cas is  _awake_ , so it's all he can do to just sit there and not burst into tears. 

Cas shifts, grunts, and turns his head to one side. Dean is behind him as he lurches his way to his feet. "Dean."

"Hey, buddy," he yawns, shuffling over to the table - he sits, stares at Cas some more, registers that the left wing is still as broken as ever, though the bruising on Cas's chest has mottled and started to fade in places, so that's a good sign. "How are you - I mean - "

He gestures helplessly, aware of Sam's eyes boring into the back of his head, and is grateful when Cas just nods. He looks exhausted, completely strung out. "Thank you. You did a very good job, given the circumstances."

"Don't mention it." Dean rolls his shoulders and neck to loosen them, yawns again, and waves a hand to Bobby, who has just come downstairs, warily eyeing the little tableau in his kitchen. "You gonna tell us what happened?"

Cas looks at him, really looks at him, for the first time in weeks. Dean relaxes immediately to see that stupidly, earnestly distant thing that's uniquely Castiel hovering at the back of his eyes, though they're still clouded with discomfort and embarrassment. "I'm not sure it would be safe for me to tell you. I would not have come here and endangered you at all, but I didn't know where else to go."

Dean tamps firmly down on the bubble of pleasure he gets at the idea that he - that  _they_  are Cas's safe haven, and shrugs. "Look, man, it ain't too hard to tell that you got chomped by hellhounds. Which means there's a pretty powerful bitch of a demon after you, and that means that whatever this is, it's big. You're gonna need our help one way or another."

Cas looks down at his bare feet as Sam comes over with a plateful of bacon, plonking it down on the table before he sits down across from Dean and spears himself a piece. Without his trenchcoat on, the angel looks far too fragile for comfort. "There is a girl, who was last seen a few towns from here." He pauses. "A very young girl."

Sam and Dean look at each other, because aw,  _hell_ , they both hate it for Very Obvious Reasons when kids are involved, and they know Bobby does too; the older hunter comes over to the table and sits, too, so they're all present for what's rapidly becoming a Serious Fuckoff Conversation. "Okay," Sam says slowly, "there's a girl. A demon took her?"

"A demon  _wants_  her," Cas clarifies, sitting up straighter and wincing as his shoulders move. "They believe that she can perceive sin."

Bobby blinks. " _Perceive_  sin?"

"Indeed." Cas puts his hands on the table and appears to study them, as though impressed his vessel is still intact. "It would be a most useful skill to have, for a demon's purposes." He looks quickly at Sam, then Dean. "Much easier to persuade the guilty into deals."

"You mean this little kid can see everything anyone's ever done that could be used against them? Sin blackmail?" Christ, Dean can't imagine having that sort of curse. Just knowing his own secrets is bad enough.

"I do not know whether she can. What matters is what the demon chasing her thinks," Cas says, shaking his head. "I have been trying to find her, to keep her safe. Her parents seem to be aware that she is being hunted, and are continually moving her from place to place. I was on their trail when I was attacked." He stops, and his right wing droops. "Andras has many creatures at his command, in Hell and now on Earth. I was fortunate that the break allowed me to escape."

Dean sits up, wonders about grabbing one of Cas's hands, and then thinks better of it. He probably wouldn't be able to make himself let go again. "Andras?"

"His particular 'kick,' as you would put it," Cas replies, his lips quirking, "is sowing dissension, deceit and discord. He must not find her. I do not have the time to recuperate in Heaven first - I must go, now."

"'Course," Dean says, louder. "You feeling strong enough to ride shotgun?"

"Excuse me?"

"Baby," Dean says, tilting his head towards the door. "You can't fly, so we'll drive."

Cas's face shifts from his typically scrunched 'confusion' face to the 'heroically condescending' one which always pisses Dean off, because it heralds denial. "Don't be absurd. Since he arrived on Earth Andras has proved himself more than capable, and more than willing, to kill any human in his path. He is a Marquis of Hell. Only an angel should approach him."

Dean actually stands up out of frustration, running a hand through his hair to distract him from the piss-poor job Cas is doing of pretending to be strong enough to even walk out the door. "Damnit, Cas - you're in fucking  _pieces_ , you're going nowhere with your - wings like that - "

"It is of no importance," Cas says, shifting irritably in the chair - the wings twitch behind him, and pain flits across his eyes. "I have called to Heaven for help. They are sending me a steed."

Dean puts his hands flat on the table, leans over it, and raises his eyebrows right in Castiel's face. "A steewhatnow?"

Which is when there's another crash out in the yard, followed by a god-awful  _screech_  which sets Dean's teeth jangling, and when Sam scrambles for the gun and Bobby claps his hands to his ears Cas, the bastard, just sits there and looks at Dean and  _smiles_. Sam wrenches open the door and just stops, just like that, and Dean runs to the door and peers under Sam's arm to find that oh, there's a fucking griffin on the porch, and yeah, that seems like a really good reason to stop dead. 

"Dean?" Sam whispers.

"Yeah," he breathes back.

"That's a griffin."

"Yeah."

"I mean, like, body of a lion head of an eagle plus huge fucking wings  _griffin_."

"Yeah."

"Dean."

" _Yeah_ , Sammy, it fucking is."

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

The griffin takes a few steps forward, tilts its head, lets out another shriek. If Dean wasn't so fucking petrified, he'd once again be amazed, because the goddamn thing is  _beautiful_ , ruddy coat and glossy feathers and gold fading into purple-blue-black wingtips and all. It even looks like it's wagging it's damn tail, which is when he realizes that it's looking right at him, and it's probably not good news that he can't tell whether it's the equivalent of a happy kitten or a really pissed-off bird of prey. 

He grabs hold of Sam and edges them both backwards into the house, slamming the door and locking it four ways as soon as they're out of range of that happy-go-lucky glare. "The  _hell_ , Cas!" he wheezes as they both stumble back into the kitchen, grabbing for every knife and gun they can on the way. "That thing is  _not_  cool!"

Cas has his rumpled clothes on the table in front of him, and looks up beatifically. "I would have thought that you'd find him very 'cool.' Though I suppose he is a little intimidating?" he offers, as though that will calm their racing heartbeats.

"Yeah, whatever," Dean coughs. "You're seriously going to go riding on that thing? C'mon, man, lighten up, at least let us be your backup."

"I've already risked my grace. I won't risk any of you."

He says it like it's so simple, because he's Cas and that's just the way Cas talks, and Dean nearly breaks. By the time he takes a deep breath to calm himself, Cas is on his feet, hunched over the table and shaking wildly as his wings melt back into his body. The right folds without a hitch, but Dean can tell the left one is hurting him, the broken bone splintering into his earthly flesh. It's over before Dean can get across the room to hold him through it, but he can still put an arm around Cas's shoulder, keep him still and tight against him until the trembling subsides. 

"Jesus, Cas, give it a rest, will ya?" he whispers it into Cas's sweaty hair, and just gets a hitching breath in response. Cas stands upright on his own slowly, still clutching at his side, but he  _is_  standing, and Dean supposes that's all the reassurance he's going to get.

It's the work of a few moments to get the angel dressed again, and then Dean grabs him around the waist, no arguments, and helps him to the door. The griffin is there, lying at the far end of the porch, looking for all the world as though it's bored out of its mind.

"It is good to see you," Cas says warmly, and the griffin gets up, haughty, stalking closer to Dean (who gulps) until it is close enough to lower its head, which Castiel rubs with obvious affection. Standing right next to the beast, Dean thinks he can smell the heavy scent of precious metals. Sam and Bobby hover in the doorway as Dean helps Cas walk a few steps to one side, and then hoists him upwards - Cas settles in behind where the wings emerge from the griffin's powerful shoulderblades as though this is his regular commute, and, turning back, grabs Dean's shoulder.

"I have my cellphone still," he says calmly. "It would be of great help to me if you can help me track the family and send me locations. Phone, rather than pray, I think," he says, noticing the surprised look on Dean's face. "I may have to lay low as a human to avoid Andras."

"You got it," Dean nods. "But hey - you're in trouble, I don't care how you call, you  _call_."

"I will heal, Dean," Cas says quietly, before his gaze drops. "But yes, of course I will."

Dean swallows, nods, and takes a step back, resisting the urge to run a hand down the griffin's smooth lion-coat. As if it knows what he's thinking, it whacks its tail across his knees, and then tips him over when its wings, the span of which rival Castiel's, spread backwards along its back and then open. Dean watches open-mouthed as it  _leaps_  off the porch, sailing straight into the sky without so much as a by-your-leave, the gusts it leaves behind as its wings pound onward shaking the leaves off the trees below. Sam and Bobby crowd out onto the porch steps to watch it go, so Dean has to force himself to his feet to push past them, searching for that dark speck that must be Cas's head against the gold. 

He just about finds it before a low-hanging wisp of cloud obscures it, and then they're gone entirely.

***

They spend most of the day quietly, researching what they can about the family online - Dean receives a text from Cas with the name  _Lucy Dunlap_  around lunchtime, which soothes his nerves a little - and finding that, as Cas said, her parents (Jim and Kathy) have been moving the family around every couple of months, staying only long enough for one or two local listings or utility accounts to pin them down with before heading on again. In the past two years they've crossed from California to Texas, up to Chicago and now back down into Kansas, and Lucy is supposedly only a few days away from her fifth birthday now, so what on earth was it that happened when she was three that made her parents skedaddle?

Whatever it was, he feels really fucking sorry for the kid, and the trail goes cold three weeks ago in a small town just east of Wichita, anyway, so by the time late afternoon rolls around and he and Sam have gone through most of a six-pack in two hours, he's tired and completely fed up with the whole thing, Marquis of Hell or no Marquis. Wichita is close, though, way too close, so he knows why Bobby and Sam still look on edge, and why at about 5:30 Bobby gets up, stretches noisily into the warm evening light, and announces that he's going to go out back and start the grill up for his famous hot-sauce burgers. 

"What d'you think?" Sam says once Bobby is out of earshot. "Should we go check out their last listed address? Couple of hours from here, tops."

"I'm guessing this Andras bastard already did that," Dean sighs, rubbing at a crick in his neck. "You saw Cas, he couldn't have flown far the way he was. Wichita is probably where that shit went down last night."

Sam nods, his lips tight. "So they're out there, somewhere, nearby. This kid and her parents."

"Yeah." Dean doesn't like the fact that they're helpless and blind on this one any more than Sam does, but he could do without the resulting tension and self-pity, he really could. 

He could also do without Bobby yelling in the backyard, but that's just what Bobby tends to do, so he leaves him to it. At least, he leaves it until the shouting is joined by a loud series of clangs, and then yet more proof that seriously, their lives are fucked up.

_"WILL YOU JUST PUT DOWN MY BURGER YOU OVERGROWN CHICKEN - "_

Dean spares one horrified look at Sam before they're both up and running, skidding to a halt halfway to the grill so they can watch, gaping, as the griffin prances around a furious and red-faced Bobby, merrily chomping on what looks like the very last - out of the ten Bobby usually makes because Sam is a glutton like that - of the much-anticipated hot sauce burgers. Sam looks as though he's about to cry.  _Bobby_  looks like he's about to explode, and Dean would be pissed too were it not for the sudden clutching fear of the question of what the  _hell_  was the thing doing back here without Cas?

He gets his answer soon enough, because as soon as the griffin is done gulping down the last bit of meat - it's actually crooning a little as it finishes, which Dean supposes Bobby can take as a compliment - it turns, fixes one beady eye on Dean, and trots over to him, shoving him hard in the chest with its beak.

" _Ow!_  The hell - " He sees the note a moment later, tucked into the feathers at the base of its neck. He takes it carefully, keeping his face as far away from that beak as he can, and reads -  _Too conspicuous. Take care of him. - C._

"Of course," he says wearily, letting his eyes fall shut as he turns his head up to the sky. "You fucking asshole."

"What?" Sam asks nervously. "He's  _staying?_ " 

"Oh yeah," Dean says, grinning over at him, because really, what was he supposed to say? "Yeah, he is."

"He is  _not_ ," Bobby snarls petulantly. The griffin chooses this moment to trot back over to him, knock him over, and, while sitting on Bobby's legs, continue to pick away at the bits of meat and sauce encrusted onto the grill. " _Fucking hell,_ get  _off_ , you _-_ "

Sam lets out a snort, and pretty soon Dean is laughing too, despite the growing sense of hysteria forcing its way up his throat. Getting ahold of himself, he stomps over to the griffin and grabs it around the neck, getting an ear-splitting squawk and a hard peck on the ear for his trouble as he pushes it off of Bobby. Before he knows it Sam's beer is being knocked out of his hand and the griffin is trying, though mostly failing, to drink up the ensuing puddle.

"So, he likes beer and burgers," Dean chuckles as he helps Bobby to his feet. "Maybe he's not so bad."

"Uh- _huh_ ," Sam scoffs as he backs away from the wings, which are, Dean thinks,  _smugly_  fluttering. "Sure, man. You're taking charge of him."

"Fine," Dean sniffs. He approaches the griffin carefully this time, making sure he's in the sightline of the eagle's eyes before he creeps closer and puts a hand in the soft feathers of its neck. To his surprise, it lets him, and even lets out a sort of contented coo as it finishes pecking up the last droplets of beer from the grass, its long, tufted ears flattening along its head. 

"Hey, Gonzo," he murmurs. "You're not so bad, are you?"

"Gonzo?" Sam says, frowning as he wanders over with another beer in his hand, careful to keep it behind his back; beyond him, a still-grumbling Bobby is setting up the grill again. "Where'd that come from?"

"I dunno," Dean replies, feeling himself flush a little. "You know, the Muppet? They've both got - beaks?"

Sam is most definitely smirking by the time Dean gets defensive and shoves him. "Well, c'mon, we can't just keep calling him 'it'!"

"Nah, sure, fine," Sam snickers. "I'm just loving the idea of you watching the Muppets."

"Everyone gets bored sometimes, shut up."

"Manamana - "

"Shut up!"

The cooking and eating of the second round of burgers goes miraculously without incident, and before he knows it Dean is sleepily sprawled on the steps of the back porch as the last of the light fades, scratching mosquito bites and, given that Cas is gone and there's a mythical beast bounding around the lawn snapping at fireflies, surprisingly content. Sam is still drinking, and Bobby has hauled out one of his tomes and is lecturing them on griffins as though proving his intelligence will make up for the pride he lost when Gonzo sat on him. It won't, of course, ever, but hey.

"Weird that they're not mentioned as heavenly creatures," Bobby muses as he sucks down another mouthful of scotch. "Our knowledge of them is almost entirely based in pagan stories. There's a version of one in Dante's  _Inferno_ , but he don't call it a griffin, and it carries souls between levels of hell."

"Tha's cool," Sam yawns.

"Sure," Bobby snorts. "Pagan stuff is mostly about them carrying off men and animals to eat. Guarding treasure, too. Maybe the guardian thing is why the angels enlisted 'em."

"Whatever," Dean mumbles, hauling himself semi-upright on the steps. There's no further messages from Cas on his phone, and there's something nagging at his mind about the missing kid, something important that he needs to figure out. With the haze of the beer and sultry heat, though, both concerns are starting to slip away, and he yawns again before getting to his feet. "I'm gonna hit the sack. Wake me if something happens, right?"

"What about Gonzo?" Sam cackles, and oh  _hell_ , he's right, the griffin has seen Dean stand up and is walking straight over to the porch, its tail swishing gently back and forth. "I think he wants to sleep at the foot of your bed."

"Jesus Christ," Dean groans. Gonzo cocks his head at him as though intrigued by his blasphemy, but otherwise doesn't move. "Fine. Fine! Come on, you," Dean growls, turning and ushering the griffin ahead of him onto the porch and towards the back door. "But if you take a crap in my room, I swear to god I will pluck you like a goose."

Gonzo squawks at him, a lot, but eventually they're both upstairs, and Dean is in bed while the griffin folds itself neatly down in a corner. Dean sits up awake for a while, staring at the feathers, still astounded that such things are real. He's seen demons and angels and all manner of stuff that's just  _wrong_ , and strange, because it's usually a corruption of a human, and that he can't stand. But this is different, something awesome and striking and purely itself, and for some reason he finds himself thinking that he wishes there were more of them, these creatures, even if they didn't keep to the straight and narrow and caused a hell of a lot of trouble for people like him. Maybe the likes of real dragons (not those horrible shells, but real ones) did deserve to fly around.

He falls asleep on that uncharacteristically idealistic thought - and wakes again in a panic, his alarm clock showing 5:01am. Wind is whistling through the bedroom from the open window, Gonzo is gone, and a few seconds later he hears a repeat of what must have woken him: a gunshot. Distant, but it's there, and he's instantly on edge, throwing off the covers and creeping down the hallway to Sam's room, taking his bedside pistol and knife with him. 

It's as he reaches Sam's door - and finds Sam sitting bolt upright in bed, because of course he would've heard it too - that he realizes what it is that bothers him so much about the kid, Lucy. He could smack himself in the face for not thinking it earlier, but as it is he just beckons to Sam to join him, which he does, and hisses into his ear over the prevailing draft.

"How did the parents always know when to move on?"

"What?"

"How did they know someone was chasing them?"

"Unless - " He watches Sam figure it out, watches his face go blank. "Unless they weren't running. They were hiding. From people like  _us_. They were hiding  _her_."

"For  _him_ ," Dean agrees, nodding rapidly. "Sam, she turns five in two days. Who knows how it works, but what if she wasn't  _ready_  until now, what if - "

"Those aren't her parents," Sam whispers slowly. "Oh,  _fuck._ "

"They need one last place to hide her," Dean says, just as another shot shatters a window downstairs, and finally, he can hear Bobby come awake with a roar. "Cas led him right to us. Not on purpose, but - "

"Yeah, too late now," Sam breathes, and together they creep downstairs, dragging Bobby along with them, who they fill in with a few short, curse-laden snatches of conversation. It's the work of a minute or two to check the wards and sigils, and everything seems secure. Besides the fact that there are demons somewhere out there taking potshots at the house, probably hellhounds too, and that Gonzo is nowhere to be seen, Dean almost feels safe.

"Panic room?" Bobby whispers, scanning the yard and the banks of surrounding trees and fields.

"Nah," Dean mutters back. "They could just burn down the house, we gotta keep watch." He's hauling out his cellphone as he speaks, but Cas doesn't pick up. He pushes down the sharp pang of fear that sends through him, hangs up, and sends a text instead before shoving it back in his pocket.  _Hi, little help here, demons and shit._  It's classy stuff. 

Twenty minutes pass with no further gunshots. Dean is starting to sweat as the heat of summer comes back at full blast, and the rising sun is starting to turn the edges of the distant trees red and gold. Finally, after sharing looks with Sam and Bobby, who look back at him with equal frustration, he rolls his neck, swears and pops up onto his feet, peering around the frame of the shattered window and out over the yard.

"Hey!" he shouts, raspy voice echoing. "What're you waiting for, huh?"

His answer is a hail of bullets, which thankfully take out the rest of the window and not him as he dives out of the way. Sam is glaring daggers at him when he crawls back, and Dean presses apology into his shoulder before he gets up again, crouch-runs to another window, and is rewarded with the sight of a tall man walking nonchalantly towards the house, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His eyes are most definitely black, and Dean is pretty sure that  _that_  is Andras, which is just all manner of bad. 

The gunfire stops abruptly, and so does Andras. His vessel is a tall Hispanic man, handsome in an Antonio Banderas sort of way, and his clothes probably cost more than Dean and Sam's monthly food budget. He scans the house, probably catching sight of the three of them peering out, because they're warded, they're not going to be too careful, and then speaks.

"Where's the girl?"

Which is just confusing as fuck, and Dean and Sam trade a couple of frantic looks before Dean clears his throat to yell back. 

"What girl?"

"Oh, come on, that's so boring," Andras groans, his shoulders rolling in a way that is definitely not human. "I should have guessed long ago that that interfering angel would get you to do his dirty work. Where is he, anyway?" he calls, a grin spreading on his face that Dean thinks is the definition of shit-eating. "It was so much fun, pulling out his pretty feathers. I'd love another go."

Anger sweeps over Dean, but luckily, he's got enough smug left for it to rise to the fore. "So, this girl then," he bellows back. "You lost her, huh? That's pretty damn funny."

Sam and Bobby are sharing a grin, too, because if they don't have Lucy, and Andras doesn't have Lucy, that means Cas does, and she's safe, and it's straightforward from here on out.  _Gank the demons and have a beer_ , Dean thinks to himself as he loads a second shotgun.  _Perfect_. 

He's forgotten, of course, that Andras is the demon of deceit. Or at least, he  _would_ have forgotten, except that he's just realized that there was a reason Andras had his cronies shooting at that particular window, because the wind has blown away the salt under the door, and many of the sigils and demon-traps now have perfect little bulletholes in them, and oh,  _fuck_  - 

There are four of them in the room behind them, suddenly, with two of them, a young couple, probably being Lucy's former parents. Dean swipes at one with his knife and gets kicked viciously in the stomach for his trouble, falling backwards through the front door in a hail of splinters. Blood is dripping down into his eyes as he coughs and lurches to his feet, but then he misses his footing and falls down the porch steps, too, landing on his ass in the yard. He can hear Bobby and Sam shooting and yelling, reassuring, but then a demon is on him again and he's got his hands busy fighting her off, wiping the blood frantically out of his face as he pins her and manages to get the blade into her chest. Light engulfs him, and he rolls away.

By the time he's on his feet again it's just him and Andras, with the fight still raging inside. The dawn is breaking now, sending shockwaves of light across the glinting cars and bits of metal in the yard, sending Dean even more blind - and what's worse, he's fairly sure the dizzy haze he's seeing around everything isn't the sun, but concussion, and he's really not sure if he can take on the Marquis of Hell, who is walking towards him, slow and steady.

"It is such a pleasure to mess with you humans, truly," Andras sighs. He's standing in front of the sun as it rises from the trees, and Dean really cannot see a damn thing even if he squints. "I wish I could stay and confuse you to death rather than this brutality, but unfortunately I am a bit pressed for time."

Dean coughs again, which does nothing for his aching head, but at least he's upright, and he's going to fight, and he can feel the sharp edges of his knife in his hands, and - 

He thinks at first that the screech is just a barn owl going to bed or something, but when two sets of wings block out the sun, he just stands still and stares. Even in stark profile alone, it's kind of amazing, the griffin and its proud head, the angel on his back with wings outstretched (and  _whole_ ) and enormous behind him, a sword in his hand, Dean's avenger. He hears Andras scream, and then as Gonzo lands the sun is back in his eyes and there is nothing but light.

_Oh_ , he thinks, and blissfully passes out.

***

When he next wakes up, he's in his bed, and there's an Annie lookalike sitting at his feet.

"Fuck!" he yelps, and immediately regrets it as his head pounds and the room swims. "Oh. Jeez. Oh, no, I didn't say that, your little ears didn't hear that."

Lucy Dunlap stares at him, very seriously. "You hurted your head."

"Yeah, yeah I did," Dean moans as he settles back down onto the pillow. "Ahh. Better." He peeks out a little from under his eyelids, failing to stop what is probably a very goofy grin spreading on his face. "Hello. You're okay."

"Yeah," Lucy says, shuffling closer to him, red corkscrews of hair swaying. "I'm okay. Mommy and Daddy aren't, but Mommy and Daddy weren't Mommy and Daddy anyway. Too much black stuff on them."

Dean's smile falters. Fuckin' a, it was true. "Black stuff?" he says hesitantly.

"Uh-huh. The stuff that shows you've done bad things." She tilts her head and scrutinizes Dean very carefully, eyes roving around his face. "You've got some. Not a lot, though. I think you're good."

"Yeah," Dean says, suddenly hoarse. "Yeah - well, I hope so, anyway. Hey," he says, tapping one of her little hands. "You know, just having some black stuff doesn't mean a person is bad. You remember that, okay?"

She frowns. "The man who tried to take me away had lots of it. Castiel made  _him_  go away, though, so that's good. No more black on him."

"Sure," Dean nods, ignoring for the moment the surge he'd felt when the proof of Cas's health came back to him, because this was important. "But still, remember - a little bit of black stuff doesn't make a person bad. It's what  _type_ of black stuff. Not all black stuff is bad. You see what I'm saying?"

She stares at him for a long time, then ducks her head into a nod. "Yeah. I have it too."

Dean sits up a bit, panicking at the thought that she might cry. "Really? How come?"

Lucy smiles, and bounces off the bed onto the floor. "I stoled some cookies from the cookie jar."

She runs out of the room, leaving Dean happily confused. Moments later a swoosh of something flies past his window, shocking him back under the quilt, and Gonzo announces his appearance - or disappearance, Dean can't quite tell - with another one of his ear-splitting shrieks.

" _Ow_ ," Dean mumbles, clutching at his temples. "Okay, alright, I'm  _up_  already..."

"No need," Castiel says quietly at the door. "He was just saying goodbye."

Dean rolls over slowly, no longer anxious enough that he feels the need to endanger his headache by moving any faster than necessary, and grins up at Cas as the angel pads in and sits gingerly on the side of the bed. "Hey."

"Hello," Cas says, ever-serious. His eyes are their normal blue, which makes Dean want to sing, and barely a hint of bruise shows at the edge of his collar. He seems vibrant, almost, for the first time in a while, his grace filling up the room with calm gladness, and Dean wonders idly whether it's because of the flying. He's kind of regretting not getting on Gonzo's back when he had the chance, just to feel what it might have been like.

As if he knows what Dean's thinking, Cas rummages in a pocket of his trenchcoat for a moment and produces a dull sort of rock, taking Dean's hand a moment later and pressing it into his palm. "Here. Gonzo brought you this."

Dean turns it over, and his breath catches in his throat. On Earth, he supposes that this would be called a geode - one of those dumb souvenirs a kid would get at a science museum - but in the same instant, he knows that there's no geode in the temporal world like this one. Every angle of light on it produces different colors, flashes of gold and blue and purple and red, and even those colors are slightly different each time they flash. He could stare at it for hours, and consciously makes an effort to tear his gaze away just as it glints a blue that pretty much matches Cas's eyes.

"Tell him thanks?" he murmurs weakly.

Cas inclines his head. "I shall." Then he pauses, and seems to be choosing his words very carefully. "Though I'm not sure Sam and Bobby will want me to pass on that message when they discover what Gonzo left for  _them_."

On cue, twin shouts of despairing disgust float up the stairs.

"Good  _boy_ ," Dean says smugly, and Cas, once again, just smiles.

**FIN**

**Author's Note:**

> My vision of Destiel (and to a certain extent the first scene of this fic) is very much inspired by [Brilcrist's brilliant art](http://schreberpants.tumblr.com/post/45091946489/tigerkatz-art-by-brilcrist). Andras comes from the 'Ars Goetica' section of [The Lesser Key of Solomon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lesser_Key_of_Solomon), an anonymous 17th-century book on demonology.


End file.
